KEITH'S WARGAMING BLOG.
This blog has been created to share my exploits in the hobby of wargaming. I game in the WW2, Seven Years War and Ancient periods. The blog also contains a few details of my book 'Airborne Armour'. Please don't quit the site without leaving a comment, even if not related to a specific post. Most wargamers have something interesting to say about the hobby!

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Friday, 21 December 2012

Here in the UK Friday 21st is the last working day before the holiday, for most people. Therefore it seemed appropriate to send Christmas wishes to all my readers and followers at this point. Thanks for visiting the blog, and thanks for your many kind and thoughtful comments.

Don't ask.

I guess wargamers have different reasons for starting and maintaining blogs. I have certainly found that creating and maintaining this blog has greatly increased my enjoyment of the hobby. It serves me as a very useful personal record of my activities, but increasingly I have enjoyed trying to broaden its appeal by making it more than just a journal of battles fought and figures painted. I have tried to make it relevant to a wider audience by including views and observations on the hobby (mainly under the 'Talking Wargaming' label) and by including some background in my after-action reports to give perspective and context to my games. I've also tried to start including maps of most games in the hope that they may be useful to other gamers, although to be honest I mainly just like maps.

Overall, my concept for the new year is to create something more like my own little wargames magazine. It will, of course, continue to be personal and parochial, but I believe the modest effort will be fun and worthwhile. I hope the blog will continue to be of some interest to visitors.

Finally, a modest Christmas gift in the form of the latest version of my rules. Of course, I appreciate that few of you (probably none of you!) will actually be playing the rules on your tabletops. Like me, you will download a free set of rules from the interweb in order to check out the concepts, and maybe to 'steal' the odd idea or two. This is all fine and dandy by me. Should any of you check them out in any detail, I am of course most interested in any comments on how you find them. Download them right here, and the playsheet here.

Saturday, 15 December 2012

I have an old box file in which, over the years, I have kept a fair pile of old wargaming documents. They consist of old self-written rules, amendments to old published rulesets, maps of games, the occasional catalogue of long forgotten figure ranges, and (most preciously) a very few old hand-written battle reports.

I haven't delved into the lower depths of this box file for a fair few years, but doing so recently I turned up the map below, nearly at the botom of the pile. It's the map I drew of my first 'proper' wargame, on the new wargame table my dad had made for me. I reckon this would be about 1972. Until then I'd been wargaming on the floor of my bedroom.

I can remember the terrain items clearly: cardboard river and roads, cardboard profile trees, lichen hedges, Bellona walls and bridges, Airfix fences, home made plastic card houses and stepped hills from polystyrene tiles. All on a reinforced hardboard table painted a lovely shiny green!

The table was 8' x 6' and the game was an ACW encounter using the obligatory Airfix figures. I have no record of the forces or the scenario, but the layout still looked pretty good to me even after all these years. Therefore I decided to make this the basis of the scenario for my next SYW bash. I thought I'd show you how the scenario subsequently developed in my head.

Table Size
I can just about squeeze an 8' x 6' table in my dining room, but it means moving furniture and dealing with a lot of other hassle. 6' x 4' is so much easier. The clincher for the smaller table was that I fancied a more crowded battlefield. I wanted all the toys out, and a 6' x 4' table would mean I could have a good dense layout of troops with second lines and reserves, giving a feeling of depth to each side's deployment. At least that was the plan.

Attack-Defence? Encounter?
I guess those are the two basic options for a table top battle. I decided to choose both - have one side attacking in one area of the battlefield (or at one stage of the battle), and the other side attacking in a different area, or at a different stage. This kind of thing is ideal to keep both sides really involved.

Terrain
I don't have the right hills for an identical terrain, so a little re-jigging would be needed. The Turnpike could go, making room for a ridge where North Hill is. South Hill also became a ridge. A reduced road network also made sense to me for the 18th century in central Europe as opposed to the 19th century in the USA. And of course the names on the map would need to change, or just be left out.

Deployment
Like a lot of wargamers, time can be tight for my home games. One way to save time is to have both sides (or most of both sides) already deployed and ready to go. This does mean less generalship can be used in deciding initial deployment and tactics, but it really can save a lot of time in deciding where those figures will go and actually putting them out. Another plus is that your visitor is presented with a table resplendent with toy soldiers all ready to go, which I feel is often a welcoming and tempting sight.

With all this in mind I set up the game as shown below (the map was botched up using Microsoft Office). The Austrians are preparing to attack the Prussians, who they believe they significantly outnumber. The Prussians are expecting a reinforcing grenadier brigade to arrive on their left flank.

Striped units are cavalry, triangles are artillery.

Austria

1. Infantry Centre

6 infantry battalions

4 medium artillery batteries

2. Infantry Reserve

2 grenadier battalions

1 infantry battalion

3.

Left Flank Cavalry

2 cuirassier regiments

4. Right Flank Cavalry (deficient commander)

2 dragoon regiments

2 hussar regiments

5. Light infantry

2 grenz battalions

1 light gun 22 units

Prussia

A. Left Wing (distinguished commander)

4 grenadier battalions

2 medium artillery batteries

B. Right Wing

4 infantry battalions

1 frei-korps battalion

2 medium artillery batteries

1 hussar regiment (independent unit)

C. Cavalry

2 dragoon regiments

1 cuirassier regiment

D. Light infantry

2 jager detachments 19 units

The Game
I was quite pleased with the way the table looked after I'd set it up. With just about all the toys out on a smallish table it had the dense feel I was looking for.

Ready for action.

With the armies set up in close proximity, fighting commenced straight away.
Here the Prussian cavalry gets stuck in, brushing aside the Austrian light troops then
charging 2 artillery batteries in flank.The grenadiers arrive in the background.

The Austrians attacked across the valley and the clash was bloody: my rules are designed to move things along quickly. By move 3 this was the result - 4 out of 6 attacking Austrian infantry units done for. You can see 3 of them fleeing back over the ridge to the right of the photo. The Prussians had been pushed back from their positions but had only lost one unit. The Austrian cuirassiers in the foreground were supposed to sweep the opposing Freikorps and Hussars from the field before attacking the Prussian flank - an idea that didn't work out due to poor command rolls.

The main Austrian cavalry force, led by their dithering commander, didn't react quickly enough to stop the Prussian grenadiers getting over the bridges. The grenadiers deployed into line and advanced, leaving the opposing cavalry with little choice but to steadily give way.

A rather bare looking Austrian centre. The Austrian cuirassiers have at last been successful, but without infantry support they can do nothing against the Prussian infantry behind the ridge. However, the Prussians themselves can do little more than shelter in the dead ground behind the ridge crest, which is still swept by Austrain artillery fire from 3 batteries. In the background the lines of opposing infantry reform after confused fighting on the Prussian left flank.

Final positions after 5 moves. Prussian fire and the unstoppable advance of the Prussian grenadiers have triumphed, with the Austrian reserve seen bested in the background. The Austrians had lost 12 out of 22 units, and so their army was officially broken under my rules. The Prussians had lost 6 out of 19.

A most enjoyable, all-action game with intense fighting from the start. 5 moves had taken 2.5 hours to play out, which I'm happy with. The Austrians never recovered from their blasting at the start of the game when their centre attacked. The Prussians did have a bit of dice luck here - I'm going to try average dice for firing and melee to see if that reduces the role of chance a bit. Armies in my rules move by alternate brigades from each side, and I'm also thinking about introducing that system for firing rather than the simultaneous fire I use at the moment.

P.S.
On the subject of scenarios, this blog recommends the article on scenario design available on Bob Mackenzie's Web Page.

Sunday, 9 December 2012

So here's my advice. If you're starting a new wargaming project, and you have a couple of friends who are not only keen wargamers but professional-standard modellers... consult them first, especially before you buy stuff.

We've already seen how my buddy Craig is going to supply the fallschirmjager for this project. Then no sooner have I bought some plastic card and other bits and pieces for a scratch-built hangar than Steve points me towards a site which has a whole host of printed hangars, control towers and other buildings suitable for a WW2 airfield, available for free download. And then he says he'll put them together for me as well, as he's bound to be better at it. Nice! This is the stuff Steve made for his own recent game:

Perfect for what I need. Steve also had some Woodlands Scenics grass mat left over from a previous project which he let me have, so the grass mat I'd bought went back to Antics Model Shop. I spent the refund on some paints and a nice Zvezda 15mm Panzer II. This just keeps getting better and better.

Other Progress
The AA machine guns are completed - here's the kind of thing I was aiming for.

Those funny coloured uniforms are Dutch Army.

And this was the result:

I think the tripods are bit too high, but I only had standing figures available.
The Timecast house is also complete, as you can see. I think it makes a believable
airfield office/workshop, as well as being a useful general building to add to my collection.

Also finished is the armoured car company.

Now I need to get up the courage to cut out those runways. Once it's done, it can't be undone. I only have enough mat for 1 attempt!

Additional Units

Craig and Steve also came up with some interesting ideas for expanding my German units.

These guys look angry. Should be perfect for storming that airfield.
But how many can you get in a Ju-52?

How many chutes to drop a dinosaur?

Oh yes. Airlanded Panzer Grenadier Mutant Gorillas, supported by Dinosaur Mounted Heavy Weapons. Fortunately Craig was on hand to bring some realism back into the project. I'll only be using the dinosaurs on the command bases. Let's not get silly here.

Stop Press

Apparently those gorillas are now available in 6mm. Excellent! Pygmy Panzer Grenadier Mutant Gorillas!

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This is an example of the best sort of Osprey - where a fresh perspective is given to a subject by a well-informed author. Some may conclude that in rehabilitating the Prussians the author takes his revisionism a little too far. However, there is much solid information here on organisation and tactics, illustrated with some very nice explanatory artwork. For me, it was well worth the price.

About Me

I was born in 1957, and am married with 3 children. I have been interested in military history for as long as I can remember, and have been wargaming since I was a teenager. I work as an Air Traffic Controller.